Royal Gold
by MiKoLo
Summary: Richard is a miner who triggered during an accident at his work place. As he begins to explore his place in the Denver cape scene he discovers an infatuation with a similarly new cape in the area. Boundaries are pushed and morals are questioned as infatuation quickly turns to obsession.
1. Adit 101

**ADIT  
**  
1.01

I lay at the edge of the roof and watched the people working out in the gym across the street. There were five of them in there at the moment. The old lady and the large bearded man were at their usual places on the treadmills while the trainer, a cute blonde, helped some new guy with the weights. The fifth, Max, was still in the back and out of sight.

My binoculars were focused on the locker door when Max stepped out. His dirty blond hair was still damp from the showers and he wore a loose gray t-shirt and black sweats. I kept him trained in my sights as he walked across the gym. I tried to concentrate but all I got was a new but dull pulse from the chest of the old woman and the familiar vibrations from one of the supports in the middle of the gym.

Max was whistling as he left the building. I ducked my head down to make myself smaller until he passed further up the street. I hated whistling. No matter who was whistling or what the tune was it always felt too shrill and grating. When he'd gone far enough it felt safe, I stood and shoved the binoculars in my bag before slinging it over my shoulder.

With silent steps I raced to the edge of the building, jumped, and grabbed ahold of the building beside it with my fingertips. My feet swung after me and stuck to the building and with a couple steps I made my way up to the roof. I followed him like that for a while, jumping from rooftop to rooftop when I could, and scaling the sides of the buildings when I couldn't. Always careful not to get too close. I also maintained concentration on those pings in case they were some sort of warning system.

Most of the pulses came from buildings: corners, doors, windows, beams, or random spots in the wall. Occasionally they came from a human or animal although that was rare. Sometimes when I concentrated on an object or building I could get it to start pulsing even when it hadn't before, but even when that happened I still didn't have a clue what it meant. I'd spent the last couple days trying to figure it out. That is, when I wasn't looking for work or following Max.

It didn't take him long to get home. The route was simple and familiar by now, two blocks south, three blocks east, and then up the steps to his old apartment. If he was part of the conspiracy he wasn't getting paid for it, or he knew better than to spend any of his ill-gotten money right now. His apartment looked more run down than mine and that was saying something. My apartment had a rat and cockroach infestation and at least half of my neighbors were constantly strung out on heroin and it still looked more pleasant than his place did.

It didn't take long for me to settle in on the roof across the street. His lights went on and I watched his shadow cross the blinds as he moved about. I'd watched him for a week now, waiting for confirmation on what I already knew. He was a cape. He had to be. I'd known it from the first time we'd met outside the mines. The way he'd held himself and the authority with which he'd spoken. He'd dismissed the reporter's claims, saying, and I quote,

"It was just an unfortunate accident. And I think in times of grief it is important for us to pull together as a community instead of finding some scapegoat to carry the blame."

I agreed with him to an extent. If there was mismanagement though, if there was someone at fault, I wanted them to be held responsible. I'd watched the clip on repeat for hours, dissecting it, trying to convince myself he was right. That's how I'd stumbled on the conspiracy. While he was talking the news station was running one of those tickers at the bottom of the screen and official reports claimed that the electricity had gone out causing one of the machines to fail, but I was there. I remember the thudding boom that had echoed throughout the mine and the grinding of gears that had followed it. Only after that had the lights flickered before going out for good.

That's when I'd really started paying attention to Max. Why did a cape tell everyone not to worry about why the collapse happened? Didn't capes have better things to do? Why was a cape working for the mines anyway? I poured over his clip again, this time trying to find out if he meant what he said or if he'd simply memorized some memo from a corporate office. It was hard to tell with just a couple sentences and through a television screen so I'd started trailing him.

And since then my investigation had hit a dead end. The only thing I knew about Max was that he worked out religiously, and that he lived in one of the crappiest apartment complexes in Denver.

An hour later and the lights in his apartment went off. I climbed down off the building, walked across the street, and looked up at his window. He emerged from the complex when I was halfway up the three story climb. In my strange position he didn't notice me even though he looked around carefully. If I'd still been on the roof it was possible he would have seen me. He took off down the street and I followed after him. His clothes were form-fitting, a long sleeve compression shirt and matching pants, all of which clung tightly to his muscle-bound body. All of it was pitch black with any logos marked out or removed. His face seemed different too, although it was hard to tell in the dark from behind. Whenever he passed under the streetlights his face seemed almost metallic.

We made our way west toward Ciancio Park, Max walking down the sidewalk and me trailing on the buildings behind him. I watched from across the street as he made his way further into the park. Following him now meant walking out into open and losing my cover. He stayed in the park for a couple hours walking around or sitting and waiting. A couple people walked by and the occasional car would drive by, but other than that it was an empty night. He headed back in my direction and I pulled the lion mask from my backpack on.

It was hard to think of something dirt or sand related so I'd decided to go with an Egyptian sphinx theme but realized only after I'd bought the mask that adding cumbersome wings when I couldn't even fly would be stupid. As Max made his way across the street from the park and I focused on the ground beneath him. A swirl of dirt, dust, and gravel began sweeping around him and he looked around for the source of the attack.

"What are you doing here?" I asked from the top of the house I stood on.

Max turned toward me, and with a huge leap he soared through the air and landed on the roof next to me. That was unexpected. I ran backwards, as I threw pebbles and dirt from the ground around the house up and slammed them into him. Nothing seemed to hit him as hard as it should, and some of them even turned off and missed him completely. The ones that did hit him seemed to bounce off with metallic ding.

He raced after me as I went and as I turned around to jump down the side of the house I saw a shadow fly over me and he landed on the ground in front of me with a thud. I threw up a torrent of dust around him obscuring him from sight, and then raced back to the other side of the house. I raised a cloud of dust as I went, surrounding the entire house in a haze of flying dirt and slowly began pushing the effect out as far as I could as I climbed down the side of the house. The block was soon filled with a sandstorm as I made my way down the street.

I was right. Max had powers. Powerful ones at that. Some sort of leaping flight and invulnerability. Too powerful for me to take down. The best I could do was blind him and run away. But I had an advantage he didn't. I knew who he really was.


	2. Adit 102

Adit

1.02

It was nearly two in the morning by the time I made it home. I slunk into my usual spot on the couch and turned on the television. The repeating clip of Max's interview continued from when I had turned it off. His deep voice spoke of peace and working together while the bright red ticker at the bottom continued to lie to me.

I pulled out my computer and began my nightly routine, but this time I had more than just Max's rarely used social media to pour through. Ciancio Park had been flagged as a suspected hangout for Displace, a small villain team associated with the local gang, the Gallant Knights Insane. Displace only had three known members. If Max was as powerful as he seemed, he might give them a decent fight. If he was working for them, then they'd gained some serious muscle.

My research continued until the sun began to rise and I felt my eyes closing despite my best efforts. There were no reports of a cape with his power set anywhere. None of the local teams, heroes or villains, had anyone who fit what I'd seen. Max either worked undercover which didn't seem likely with his powerset, or he was new to the cape scene. Like me.

I woke to the sound of someone pounding on my door.

"...important for us to," Max was saying on the television as I turned it off.

"Dick!" I heard Deepak say through the door, "You were supposed to be at the rally."

I pulled a shirt on before I opened the door to let him in.

"Oh," he said as he stepped passed me with a wince. "You've got to take a shower man."

"Sorry, got in late last night and fell asleep on the couch."

"That's not a one night stench," Deepak said as he turned on the lights. A stack of empty pizza boxes sat on the coffee table with an array of soda cans littered around it. A couple of them had fallen over and obvious stains covered the table and the white carpet floor around it. Piles of clothes from my nights out were spread out over the floor and a couple cockroaches scurried into them when the lights went on.

"Wow," Deepak said.

"I've been a little busy," I said as I started clearing off the table.

"Is this a cry for help?" Deepak said as he followed me into the dining room where dishes filled the sink and blanketed the counters. "I mean, I was here a week ago."

"I've just been preoccupied is all."

"With what? You haven't been to any of the meetings with the lawyer."

"I've been thinking about that recently," I said as I tossed the mostly empty cans in my hands onto the heaping pile that used to be a trash can. "Are we sure this is the right thing to do? Max said-"

"That guy again? We've been over this. He's an engineer, he has a good reason not to want a thorough investigation into what happened. Even if he did his job right he can't know for sure if he wasn't the one who signed off on one of the machines that broke down. What's up with you and that guy?"

"Nothing," I said. It was unbelievable how messy an apartment could get in just a week. "I just think he has a point is all."

"Maybe he does, but Tom says we'll do better if we present a united front."

"Who?"

"The lawyer," Deepak said. "You really don't care about this do you?"

"I do," I said as I started washing the dishes. "If you're gonna complain about my apartment could you at least clean up the rest of the trash in the living room?"

"We were thinking about going out for a drink tonight," Deepak said as he left the room.

"Can't tonight."

Deepak appeared back in the doorway empty-handed. "Why not?"

"I've already got plans. My parents are coming into town," I lied.

"Mine wanted to fly in after they heard about the accident but I convinced them it wasn't necessary. They're coming to visit for Thanksgiving though. Leah is excited to meet them."

"That's a big step."

"One I'd rather skip." He dropped the pizza boxes beside the trash can. "I'm sorry man, but you're gonna have to take a shower before we run."

"Fine," I said, "I can do this later."

By the time I'd finished washing up Deepak had managed to get the place back to its usual cluttered state. I picked up the dirty clothes off the floor while he started stretching.

"You have been running on your own, right?" he asked.

"Of course," I lied again.

"Sure," he said.

"How many miles today?"

"Sixteen this week. Don't worry, I've got a great route for today."

He made his way out the front door and I followed after him. We fell into our usual stride, him setting a grueling pace while I struggled to keep up. We made our way to William Hayden Park where he led us up a mountain trail up to a vantage point where I could see the Denver skyline spread out before us. We made our way back and I collapsed in the small yard in front of my apartment while Deepak grabbed a couple water bottles from his car.

The world spun around me as I heaved, not nearly prepared for the run as I usually was.

"I know you've been preoccupied but you've got to keep up with your running during the week," Deepak said after some time. "Otherwise this is dangerous. I can run with you if it'll help."

"No, I can do it. It's just-"

"I know," Deepak said. "It's been a crazy week."

"I'll get back on schedule," I said. "I'm too tired to do math right now. How many miles this week?"

"Thirty-four."

"I hate you."

We both settled into a comfortable silence until he asked, "have you started looking for a new job yet?"

"Sort of," I said. "Not really."

"I think it'd be good. For both of us. Get back into a routine. Leah is worried even if she won't admit it to me. I think she thinks we should drop the suit and go back to work."

"Maybe we should."

"Maybe we should," he echoed me. "It just feels wrong. We'd been complaining about the equipment for forever now and then it breaks down and of course they're very sorry but 'it's just an accident'. No record of our complaints. They'll pay off anyone they have to to keep settlements for the injured and dead down and then return to business as usual because it's cheaper that way and that's what they care about, the bottom dollar. They don't care about us, we're expendable. Who cares if five hundred and three people died as long as you've made a profit."

He punched the ground and we fell into silence.

"We could really use you, Richard," he said after a while. "You made it out of there! Devon is still unconscious and the other guy refuses."

"Max."

"With what he's said to the media and you being silent so far we just look money hungry but with you on our side." He trailed off.

"Alright, yeah, I'll make it to the next meeting. I've got to get ready for my parents coming over right now though," I said as I stood up. "My apartment is still a wreck."

"Awesome," Deepak said. "I could help you out if you want."

"No, it's fine."

"You sure? I wouldn't mind, really."

"Yeah. I'll be fine. Tell Leah hi for me."

"Sure thing. Don't forget, thirty-four miles this week."

He left in his black pick-up truck as I made my way back into my apartment. I stared at the soda stained carpet and the layer of dust that had settled over most of the room.

"...Pull together as a community," Max continued on the screen as I flipped the television back on and made my way to the kitchen. His bass voice echoed throughout the house as I started to clean again.

I started up a load of laundry before getting back to work on the kitchen. As I put up the now dry dishes I noticed the grime in the cabinets and pulled all my dishes out to scrub them out with bleach. When I finished that I swept and mopped to give them time to dry out, and then as I started putting the dishes back I noticed a stains from dishwasher on one of the glasses. All the dishes went into the sink as I washed and polished them until they were spotless. Throughout the evening I worked, stopping only to make myself dinner. I got the occasional ping as I walked around from door frames and window sills and sometimes random spots on the wall. Max's words repeated throughout it all. They followed me as I scrubbed the soda stains out of the carpet and as I scrubbed the grout between the tiles of my bathroom with a toothbrush.

I fell asleep folding laundry on my bed. When I woke I set back to work, willing my body to move through the pain of yesterday's run. By the time the afternoon had come around I headed outside to mow the pocket-sized lawn, clear the gutters, wash and vacuum out the car, and I found myself edging the sidewalk with a shovel in the dim light of the porch light. Sharp hunger pains followed me as I headed to the store to buy brighter light bulbs.

The car ended up driving past the gym where Max worked out and I could see him lifting weights as I glanced inside. I parked the car and made my way to the roof of the now familiar building across the street. He followed his usual routine and by ten he was on the street and headed home. Just like last night he made his way to the park where he hung out for a couple hours. This time I didn't stop him as he made his way back to his apartment.

He meant to meet Displace, either to join them or fight them. My stomach growled as I made my way back to the car. I stopped for food and found myself looking up Displace on my phone. There were three known members: Blink, Target, and Magdalena. The first apparently made things disappear although there wasn't much information on her, not even a blurry picture. There was more information on Target. He used arrows with special properties that seemed to change from fight to fight. He had started off in Miami, but after one of his special arrows had permanently blinded a hero he went on the run for a year. About a month ago he reappeared here in Denver working with the GKI. The website had a photo of a Hispanic man in a Robin Hood-like costume complete with feathered hat and an added domino mask. The newest member of the group, Magdalena, had already made a bit of a name for herself. She had golden glowing skin and a pretty powerful Alexandria package. The connections were obvious. Apparently she also had a teleportation power although there were arguments about how it worked or if she even had it at all. There were a lot of pictures of her, although most of them were blurry.

Not a bad set of powers, all said. If Max meant to fight them he might not fare as well as I thought. Even if he could take out the two weaker teammates he'd end up stalemated against Magdalena.

When I got back home I set about replacing the bulbs in the porch and the rest of the house. Max's voice still droned on and I fell asleep with my head against the wall as I cleaned out the inside of the window in the living room.

The rest of the week continued in the same way. I woke up with a text from Deepak reminding me to run and then spent the day cleaning, sometimes pausing to eat, sometimes not. By the end of the day I always seemed to end up outside Max's gym. Each night I followed him to the park where the two of us waited for Displace to show up.

Max saw them first. Late Friday night, about the time he usually gave up and headed back home, the golden glow of Magdalena made its way into the park. She pulled up short when she saw Max. It was hard to make out any features other than the fact she was definitely a woman and the golden glow. At first glance I thought it was because of the light making it hard to see her, but there was a distortion that made her look more like a mannequin than flesh and blood. It was more pronounced around the face were my brain expected more details, but the rest of her body had the same effect on it, as if she were nothing more than a plastic coated barbie doll.

"Why are you here?" she asked in a thick accent. I got a ping off her, which made absolutely no sense.

"I'm just here to talk," Max said. He raised his hands above his head.

"This is GKI territory, you should not be here," she said.

I began scanning the rooftops nearby. If Target stumbled on this scene he'd want to find an advantageous position before he showed himself. Unless he knew Max's power he'd probably make the same mistake I did and head for a roof.

"I want to talk to Carlos," Max said.

"You'll have to be more specific than that," a new voice said. Blink had approached the park from behind me and I'd missed it. Luckily, it looked like she hadn't seen me either. I pressed closer to the roof and watched her approach the edge of the park. This was the first time I'd seen her and she wasn't quite what I'd been expecting. She was much larger than I had pictured. And not only that but she looked like she was wearing a couple layers of clothing. The outermost layer was a tracksuit with eyes sewn into it. Not nearly as professional looking as Magdalena's skinsuit or the outfit I'd seen in Target's picture but it served its purpose. She wore what looked like a one of those masquerade masks to cover her face although I couldn't quite tell how she was keeping it in place.

"Carlos Posa, we have history," Max said as he turned around to face our direction so he could talk to Blink. I wouldn't have turned my back on Magdalena.

"It's not gonna happen," Blink said. "And we've got our own business to see to tonight, so you'll have to excuse us."

I spotted Target as he waved to show Blink his location while Max's back was turned.

"I don't want to start a fight, I just want a meeting with Carlos." He took a step toward Blink and a tree next to him vanished.

Max leapt and I threw up a wall of dust between him and Target to break the archer's line of sight. I must have been too late because before Max landed an arrow swept in the air beside him and exploded into a bundle of ropes which wrapped around his body. He dropped to the ground and writhed as he tried to escape the tangled mess. Blink ran away from where he had fallen and I watched while a mailbox not far from her disappeared.

Magdalena dove from the sky and I sent up a dust cloud and as many small rocks as I could, but she simply barreled threw them and slammed into Max's prone form. She rocketed back into the sky but Max continued trying to free himself of the ropes seemingly unfazed by he hit.

I threw up another cloud of dust around Blink hoping to block her line of sight to Max as well. I started buffeting the area she had been in with rocks from the yards around and felt one of them leave my power. I turned the rocks away from her as Magdalena began descending for another attack. The handful of pebbles slammed into the golden woman and bounced off harmlessly. Max had managed to sit himself up and the golden slam knocked him back to the ground but he sat back up without even a moment's pause and threw the rest of the ropes off his feet. I refocused my rocks back on Blink and felt another one vanish. Max leapt and managed to catch Magdalena by surprise. As soon as he had a hold of her the two of them began to plummet to the ground. They landed with a flash of gold and Max stood over an empty crater. Magdalena had vanished.

Max looked around and I dropped the dust around Blink. She had knelt down by the sidewalk and was using it to guide herself through the swirling cloud and away from the fight. She looked over her shoulder as the cloud settled and stumbled into a run at the sight of Max staring down at her. The tree popped back into existence. With a clear line of sight I trained the pebbles at her and two of the three hit her with the third disappearing. Max leapt as Target emerged through the wall of dust with an arrow notched on his bow. I threw up another wall of dust before he could fire off a shot but the arrow flew threw it. As it raced to intercept Max it blinked out of existence.

Blink cursed.

Max landed beside her and threw a punch at her head. He vanished and Target stepped through the dust.

"Is he gone?" he asked.

"For now," she said. The mailbox she'd gotten rid of reappeared where it used to be. "Where's Magdalena?"

"I don't know," he responded. "Stupid dust blocked my sight."

"Mine too."

Another mailbox, this one closer to her, disappeared as the pebble that had vanished flew forward out of the air and clattered onto the road.. The two of them made their way back toward the park and by the time they made it there Magdalena flew in and the three of them raced off. I dropped the dust clouds and pebbles. No use keeping them up now.

The arrow reappeared and sped forward exploding into a black ooze further up the street. Max reappeared with a swing and he stumbled forward as his fist passed through thin air. He looked around for a moment.

"Alright, I know you're out there. Might as well show yourself."

I stood up and Max turned to look in my direction. He leapt while I dropped from the roof and we ended up face to face. It was the first time I'd gotten a good look at him while he was using his power. He wore no mask but it didn't matter because his entire face had molded into a steel cast of a face. It was similar to Magdalena except his was silver instead of gold and there was no glow. This close, and knowing what he looked like without the powers, I could see the small resemblances. The square jaw and the rather large arch of his nose remained but everything else was hidden behind a coat of steel.

"Who are you?" He asked. He didn't bother to disguise his voice.

I'd brainstormed a couple names but none of them felt right. Sphinx, Sandstorm, Dust Devil. Didn't work, too generic, and too villain-like.

"A friend," I said instead.

"You attacked me last week."

"To be fair, it wasn't really an attack. It was more of an intimidation technique. Sort of. I really just wanted to talk."

He didn't say anything and it was hard to tell the expression of his face since it was covered in metal, but if his body language said anything it was that he didn't trust me. His arms were crossed and his legs were firmly planted.

"Alright," he said at last. "We're fine."

He turned to head off and I don't know what made me say it, but I couldn't stop myself from blurting out, "I can help you, if you want."

He paused to look me over. "Walk," he said and the two of us headed south on Lipan Street, away from the fight and in the opposite direction of Displace. After we had walked a couple blocks away he paused. "Why do you want to help me?"

The honest truth was that I had no idea why I wanted to help him. In fact, at the moment my head was screaming at me, reminding me that it was likely this man was helping cover-up whatever happened at the mines. My gut, on the other hand was telling me I could trust him, that he meant what he said in the interview, that he was a good person. Sure, a good person probably would have joined up with the Protectorate and become a hero. He hadn't, but neither had I.

"My gut says to trust you," I said after what was likely too long of a silence.

He didn't say anything at first, and the two of us continued our walk in silence as he thought about it. "Alright," he said at last and his face betrayed no emotion, no reaction. "Meet me in Columbus Park tomorrow at ten thirty, in front of the hardware store."

"Sure."

He held out his hand and I shook it. "Thanks, by the way, for the assist."

With that he dropped my hand and leapt away.


	3. Adit 103

Adit

1.03

"Which is why it's important to keep this case out of the courtroom," the man in the sleek black suit said. "Out there, the public is on your side and progress is on your side. Together, we can do this!"

There was a round of applause as the man stepped back and the foreman, Nathan, took his place. Nathan began talking about fliers as the black suited man made his was around the edge of the room toward me. He wore an overly styled black suit that was very up to date on the current fashion trends and tailored specifically to him. His slick black hair had been cut and stylized recently. He smiled at me with blindingly white teeth as he approached.

"Glad you could make it, Richard," he said as he shook my hand with his soft hands.

"Sure."

"With you on board there's a real chance of us being able to do some good here."

"And what good would that be?"

He paused long enough to give me a once over although his wide smile never faltered. "Protection for the little guy, of course. Mining reform and increased regulation to make sure tragedies like this never happen again."

The meeting came to an end and the hundred or so mine workers started to stand up. The loud noise of people talking and chairs scratching against linoleum filled the room.

"And why do you care?" I asked.

He seemed taken aback and hesitated before answering. "It's the right thing to do."

I nodded and let a couple workers pass.

"You don't agree?" the man asked with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

"I just," I hesitated. "Things aren't always so black and white. Mistakes happen."

"So we should take measures to prevent as many of those mistakes from happening that we can."

"Mr. Goodwin," the familiar booming voice of Trent said and the both of us turned to see the giant of a man approach through the crowd.

"Trent," Mr. Goodwin said. "Good to see you."

"I'll leave you two to talk," I said.

"That's not necessary."

"Yeah," Trent added. "I just got a quick question."

"Still," I said as I moved away.

The lawyer stepped in my way and held out a card. "I really think we should meet up some time."

"Sure," I said as I pocketed the card and made my escape.

Deepak caught me at the doorway. "Looks like someone has a crush," he said. I followed his pointed look at Mr. Goodwin who was still staring at me while nodding absentmindedly to whatever Trent was saying.

"Not my type." I said as I left.

"Oh come on," Deepak said as he followed after me. "Even I have to admit the guy looks attractive and I can never tell. He looks like a black-haired Legend."

I had to admit he did. He had the same square jaw and the same lean physique. There was something about him that turned me off though. I didn't trust him.

"Nah," I said instead. "He's got nothing on Legend."

"You're just in a mood," Deepak said as we get to his truck. We drove back to my place in silence. I kept getting a ping from under the hood of his truck and the vibrating pulse was distracting enough I couldn't concentrate on anything else. It stopped when he turned the truck off and I looked to see Deepak looking at me expectantly.

"What?" I asked.

"What happened to your place?"

"Oh," I said as we stepped out. "I gave it a new coat of paint."

"Did you power wash the sidewalk too?"

I looked down at the small freshly cleaned sidewalk. "Oh. Yeah."

"It's just last time- did you edge the sidewalk?" He followed me into the house and tossed his duffel bag onto the couch. "Wow. You really took what I said last time to heart. The place looks amazing."

"Thanks," I said as I headed into my room to change.

It didn't take long before the two of us were back outside running down the street. We ran into town this time, a round trip of seventeen miles. By the time we finished we were both exhausted and drenched in sweat. Deepak reminded me of the thirty-three miles I had to run on my own during the week and then he was gone.

I showered and dried my curly brown hair as I sat on the edge of my bed. My makeshift costume on the floor stared up at me. It looked pathetic compared to Max's. Not that I could ever pull off his look. It wasn't that I was out of shape, far from it, but the man was statuesque and his skin tight costume only helped to accentuate that fact. Still, I couldn't get the thought of the two of us out of my head. If we were going to team up we'd be looked at together and we'd look more than a little disjointed if I wore baggy sweatpants and a hoodie while he wore what he wore. And the stupid lion mask. It was mocking me just sitting there.

It didn't take me long to head out and buy the new costume. I spread the purchases out so it wouldn't be obvious and so it couldn't all be traced back to one place in case that would become an issue. The matching black compression shirt and pants were easy enough to buy and mark over the branding. And I already the black tennis shoes to match. The mask was the hardest. I couldn't match Max with the natural mask his power gave him and buying a metal mask wasn't as easy to buy. I ended up settling on a hockey mask spray painted silver. It was close enough the correlation would be obvious.

It didn't look bad, all-in-all. Max would dwarf me, but that would have happened regardless of what I was wearing. By the time I'd finished gathering everything and fixing it, it was time to head out to our meeting spot. It felt strange to feel the night breeze through my hair while out and about in costume. Without my hoodie and sweats, and in this get-up, I almost felt naked.

I arrived a little bit early, but Max was already there sitting on a park bench and keeping an eye out. He stood as I approached and as I passed under a street light he twitched.

"It's you," he said.

"Yeah, sorry, I changed my costume a bit."

"No," he said as he stepped closer. "You're the guy from the day I did my interview."

My mind raced and I stumbled over my response, "No, that must be- sorry, that's not me."

"It is. I'd remember that curly hair anywhere." He held out his hand and I stopped, still a ways away from him. "Have you been following me?"

"No! Yes. Sort of. Yes."

"Why?" He looked around as if he expected others to emerge from the shadows.

"I don't know. I saw you before your interview and I knew then you were special. A cape, I mean. And then I saw your interview on the news and once I had your name it was easy enough to figure out who you were and then I just sort of started checking in on you and then that night you went to the park I decided to talk to you but it didn't turn out the way I'd liked so I waited until last night after I made up for attacking you to introduce myself."

He remained silent and it was hard to read any emotion on his expressionless steel face. "And now you want to help me." It was a statement, not a question. He was mulling over the information, trying to sort it all out and make sense of it. I don't know how he could, I couldn't and I'd been trying for two weeks now.

"Why do I trust you?" he asked. "Some sort of Master effect?"

"No, I don't do that. You've seen what I can do. If there is one, it's not me."

"See, I believe you even though it would make sense to not send the Master in." He looked around again, slower and more pointedly this time. He looked back at me. "I felt the same way last time we talked, like I could trust you even though it didn't make sense."

"Maybe we could go to the Protectorate, have them look us both over and see if there's a Master effect at play because I feel the same way about you."

"No." He said and his voice was sharp. "I'm not revealing myself to the Protectorate until I'm done."

"With the GKI?"

He gave a curt nod.

"It won't just be them, you know. They've got the High Minded and The Freedom Force working for them too."

"I can take care of myself."

"Against all of them?"

"If I have to."

"That's ridiculous. You'll never get anything past the High Minded, not now that they're aware of you." I said. He turned to leave and I felt sick to my stomach. "Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it." He paused. "You don't have to fight with me or tell me what you're doing, just point me at what you need taken care of and I'll do it. No questions asked."

"Alright," he said. "I need Blink taken care of. With her around I can't stay in the fight."

"You want me to kill her?" I felt my stomach sink.

"If that's what it takes. Until then, I don't want you anywhere near me. I don't trust whatever this is between us."

He leapt and I watched him fade into dark night as he bounded down the street. I looked down and saw my hands shaking. There was too much to process. He felt something for me, perhaps the same thing I felt for him. Whatever that was. The question of whether he was a good person or not had apparently been answered, and in spite of that I didn't feel any different about him. I'd spent hours trying to figure it out, to figure out if I could trust him and now that I knew the answer it didn't seem to matter.

I'd always wanted to be a part of the Protectorate, what kid didn't? And now the opportunity was right in front of me and all I could think about was how much Max was going to need me. How much danger he was going to be in on his own.

The idea that a Master was involved hadn't occurred to me, but it made sense. It was the only thing that made sense. The way I was acting. The way I was feeling. It had to be the answer. Still, there wasn't much I could do about it. Max didn't want to go to the Protectorate.


	4. Adit 104

Adit

1.04

Despite my best efforts the situation with Blink remained unsolved. Displace hadn't returned to the park, though I hadn't really expected them too. There were reports they'd robbed a bank and escaped before the heroes could arrive, and a couple sightings further west in Arvada although none of them were confirmed. I'd spent my nights patrolling the area anyway, heading back home in the early morning when the sun started to rise.

I had followed Max's orders and stayed away from places I knew he frequented. Even then, I'd found myself absentmindedly heading in his direction more than a few times and had to force myself to back off. He still hadn't made contact with me, if he even knew how. I was stuck waiting for a solution to a problem I didn't have any clue of how to solve.

The bad news didn't end there. Rumors online had been growing that the Freedom Force had split up. Half of them had reportedly left town while the other half had either absorbed or been absorbed by Displace. Meaning Blink was more likely to have more allies at her side at any given time. The ramifications of the break up went beyond my personal goals though. GKI's stronghold was weakening despite The High Minded's best efforts. The other gangs had noticed and had started testing the waters, trying to push the boundaries of their territories. No real violence yet thanks to the Protectorate spending extra resources to patrol the area, but it was a tense peace.

After aimlessly patrolling for a week, I'd resorted to reaching out to the local gang presence to try and put out some feelers, but that had failed too. It was Deepak who'd given me the inspiration to turn to less obvious avenues. After our weekly runs he'd tried to convince me to meet up with Mr. Goodwin again and I realized the potential that could present.

I sat outside his office now and looked down at the small card in my hand. Scott Goodwin. I didn't know much about design but I even I could tell the card had been crafted to match the sleek modern look of the building. The card was pitch black and etched with bold silver writing. The building nearly shone in its austerity with black accents littered about to contrast.

It didn't take long after I'd sat down for Scott to appear. He looked as handsome as always with a flawless smile on his face. He wore a tailored suit that matched the aesthetic of the rest of the place. His long legs made short work of the distance between us and I found myself shaking his hand over introductions. Then he led me back through the doors to his office.

"I'm so glad you decided to come," Scott said as he gestured to a chair. "Can I get you a drink?"

"No," I said. "I'm fine. I have a couple questions I hoped you could help me with."

"Right to business then," he said. He sat down behind his desk. "Ask away."

I put my concentration on him as best as I could, and continued. "I was wondering about who you've represented. If I'm going to get on board with whatever it is you are trying to do, then I'll need to know they type of man I'm working with." I continued to focus on him as he talked.

"Attorney-client privilege makes that difficult, but I'm sure we can reach a place we can both be satisfied. Our clients that have gone to court are public record. I can have those sent over to you without issue. Otherwise there's not much more I can do for you."

"Have you represented politicians or corporations?"

"Yes. I can have those prioritized."

"How about villains?"

"We've had a client in court yes."

"And clients outside of court?" I asked. He gave me a broad smile and I felt a small ping from the back of his head.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to talk about anything of that nature."

"How about murderers."

"None. That's not really our forte."

"Alright. If you could send the others to me I'd appreciate it."

"And if the cases pass your scrutiny then you'll add your support?"

"If the cases pass my scrutiny, I'll be more likely to add my support, yes."

"That's not really a lot to go on, and a lot of work on my end."

"I'm sure you can just have your secretary send the info to me."

"I was planning on a more personal touch for this," he said.

"That won't be necessary. About the villain you represented."

"Seventh Heaven from Freedom Force," he filled in. "She was charged with petty theft on ten accounts. Assault and battery on twelve accounts and thirty-five accounts of disturbing the peace. The assault and battery charges were dropped along with over half the charges of disturbing the peace and petty theft. The rest stuck and she was fined and sentenced to a year in prison. She got out about two years ago. She's racked up some more minor charges since then but hasn't been caught."

"So she's still on strike one. Will you represent her if she gets caught again?"

"I'm afraid I'm not a liberty to say."

It wasn't a lot to go on. He had ties to Freedom Force, which could mean a connection to the High Minded and the GKI and so potentially to Displace as well, especially now that Displace had become part of the gang's primary cape force. The connections were tenuous though, and even if the connections were there, the chances they would link to Blink would be small. It had been a small shot in any case. I got a ping from the stacks of paper on Scott's desk and I got an idea as well as an inkling of what the pings meant.

"Do you have a physical copy of that case. I'd prefer to see it in person if at all possible."

Scott looked at me with a curious expression on his face before he nodded. "I can do that. I'll have to redact some of the information for obvious reasons." He reached for his phone and I stopped him.

"It's alright. If you're just going to redact the information anyway I don't want to waste your time with a physical copy. If you can have those sent to me though, I'd appreciate it."

He stood as I did. "I'll have them sent to you as soon as possible. Just give me a place to send them." He pulled a pen and notepad from his breast pocket and handed them over to me. I wrote down my email. "Your number too, if you don't mind. Just in case."

I wrote it down as well and then said my goodbyes and left. I tried to concentrate on the building around me as I left but the only ping I got was from one of the legs of the secretary's desk. Outside, I circled around the building as best I could. The building was ten stories tall and had a basement. Scott's office was on the top floor though, and the papers would probably be there as well. It wouldn't be hard to get up there, but getting in would be harder. There were glass walls but no windows that could be opened. It was possible there was an entrance on the roof but I couldn't see anything from my current position. Even if there was, it was likely to be locked from the inside and rigged with an alarm. My powerset didn't exactly lend itself to that sort of problem.

I could break down the door but then the police would be called and I'd be on a timeline with a potential breaking and entering charge. Not a good way to start as a hero. After I'd made my circle of the building I headed back home.

Infiltrating was an option. I looked into the mirror in my bathroom and worked on shifting my skin around. I managed to make myself look a little different, a little chubbier in the face, but my curly brown hair was still distinctly mine. Anyone who saw it would immediately recognize me, the same way Max had. I kicked myself again for being so stupid.

I was being ridiculous. Even if I managed to make myself look like someone else it wouldn't be enough. I still wouldn't have keys and no one would recognize me. This wasn't a heist movie and I wasn't a professional thief. My best bet would be to break in and try to get out before I got caught. A timeline to know when I needed to get out would be useful though. A plan, probably horribly misguided, formed and I began to prepare for the night.

I pulled the skull cap tight around my head as I approached Scott's building. A week of watching the place every night had informed me that the place would be empty now, and my break in at a similar building a couple blocks over last week gave me the timeline I needed. The police had arrived in thirty-one minutes which gave me a solid twenty-five minutes tonight to find the file before I needed to be gone.

I pulled the mask on as I made my way to the side of the building and began the climb to the top. The cool night air whipped around me as I walked to the now familiar door. I pulled a couple rocks out of my pocket and took a deep breath before I started the timer on my watch. The rocks flung forward and slammed through the wood around the handle of the door. The lock broke and the high pitched whine of the building's security filled the air as I shoved my way through the now dysfunctional door.

I raced down the steps to the top floor. Scott's office was at the far end of the hall but I doubted the files would be in there. The place had been immaculate, not exactly the place where old files were kept. I raced down the hall holding onto the rocks in my hand and using them to break down the locked doors as I looked for a room full of documents.

Three offices and a break room later I entered a room lined with filing cabinets. Each one had a letter or letters on it. A, B-C, and so on. I made my way to the S file and began scrolling through. Seventh Heaven sat nestled between Seabern an Sven in a small file. I pulled it out and saw a single form on the inside with a list of Seventh Heaven's crimes and their verdicts. This wasn't it. Scott had sent me more than this. I looked around the room trying to see if there was a ping, but all the only one I got was from the doorway.

I made my way over to the F file and looked up Freedom Force which held a similarly small amount of documents. A page on Seventh Heaven, and others on Liberation, Sovereign, Commando, and Yankee Doodle. Nothing of substance though. I looked down at my watch. Sixteen minutes had passed. I made my way down to the cabinet labeled with an H. High Minded was the first file and it was overflowing with information. I pulled the whole thing out and realized that the folder behind it was theirs as well. Far too much to carry. I began pouring through the documents. Detailed information on Freedom Force and Displace's crimes filled it, although I noticed there wasn't much on High Minded.

I found Blink's section and shoved it into my bag. Four minutes to spare.

I rushed out into the hall and skidded to a stop at the sight of Sovereign. She wore her usual black ball gown with an intricate silver Venetian mask covering her face and a matching crown on her head.

She held up her silk gloved hand to motion me to stop and her voice boomed out unnaturally. "Declare thyself."

I did a sweep of the hallway for the knight that followed her around but didn't see it. Which might actually be scarier.

"I shall not repeat myself, peasant."

"I'm nobody," I said as I raised a cloud of dust between us. Instead, only a couple specks of dirt that had managed to survive the intense cleaning of this building swirled about in pathetic circles between us. It was enough to give Sovereign a moment's hesitation. She didn't know what I could do and while the dust wasn't enough to provide cover, there was just enough to be obvious that something was happening.

I pulled the rocks out of my pocket and flung them behind me at the glass window at the end of the hallway. They rocketed into it with a sharp crack but only made small dents.

"Attempting to flee?" Sovereign said and her Knight appeared at her side. The eight foot tall construct was covered from head to toe in black metal armor and held a greatsword made of the same metal in each of its hands. It lumbered slowly down the hallway toward me and I flung my handful of rocks at it. They clattered off uselessly and the thing took another slow step in my direction.

I whipped the rocks around the creature toward Sovereign and she jumped out of the way and out of my line of sight from my limited position in the hallway. The Knight paused in its march toward me, maybe hesitant about leaving Sovereign unprotected. I pressed the attack against Sovereign, sending the rocks swirling in circles throughout the half of the room she'd went. Hopefully it would send the Knight back and open up the hallway so I could make my way to the stairwell. It didn't move to protect her, which was disappointing, but he didn't advance toward me anymore either, which at least gave me a moment to think.

"You uncouth," I heard Sovereign saying in her booming voice again before she was cut off with an oof as I felt one of my rocks come to a stop. I began pelting the area and got a couple more good hits in before she managed to evade the rocks.

The creature began marching toward me again and I frowned. It was maybe four steps away from getting in reach and even though each of its steps took a solid couple seconds, my time was running out.

One of my rocks hit Sovereign again and I began pelting the area. The Knight paused again and then the Sovereign made her escape and my rocks were striking at air again. The Knight took another step. He stopped anytime she got hit. I could use that. I took a step back and waited for the feeling of one of my rocks hitting her. I felt it just before I heard her cry out and I raced forward to run around the metal man. The greatsword it held swung out at a speed I hadn't expected from the lumbering thing and the entire right side of the hall was blocked off by thick black steel. I tried to slow down, but still slammed into the wall of metal and fell to the ground dazed. I scuttled back away from the looming thing but it remained still as Sovereign maneuvered away from my barrage.

The Knight removed it's sword from the side of the wall where it had embedded itself and took another step. It'd made its way over half of the hallway at this point, and I still didn't have a way to get past it. I prepared and when I hit Sovereign I made another race for the opposite side but as I expected the sword flung out. Prepared for it this time, I managed not to get hit or run into it, but still failed to get past. Another pause and then it was walking again. It's legs were too thick to try and slide between. I made my way up the wall and hung from the ceiling by my feet. I could feel the blood rush to my head as I waited.

I felt less maneuverable like this, less comfortable, but it was possible the Knight wouldn't expect this. As soon as I felt the first stone hit, I raced forward. Both of the Knights greatswords swung out, but they swung through the air beside it and I raced by unharmed overhead. I emerged from the hallway to see Sovereign slide underneath one of the black leather couches that had been battered. A vase and the glass table had been shattered and shards of glass covered the floor. She gasped when she saw me on the ceiling. I looked over my shoulder and saw the Knight slowly turning around. I began pelting her with rocks, slamming them into her and pulling them back a short ways before rocketing them forward again.

She curled up into the fetal position and I turned my way to the stairwell. A swarm of black cloth appeared in the doorway, vaguely shaped like a man. It began racing toward me in little zig-zags, moving much faster than the Knight. The alarm on my watch went off. The cloth hit my head and I felt a swarm of sharp needles pierce my skin, like I'd fallen into a cactus bush. I dropped, trying to make my face a less obvious target, and directed a rock at the constantly shifting mass of cloth. The new construct moved to quickly and the rock hit me instead. By then the cloth had already shifted away sideways and then back toward me for another round of stings as a length of cloth clung to my arm. The longer it stayed the more it hurt and I found myself shifting my skin toward the area which helped alleviate a bit of the pain. By the time I'd directed a rock at the cloth it'd moved away and danced around in a strange back and forth pattern before grabbing onto my leg. I shifted skin down to the area as I tried to make my way toward the stairs and ignore the pain.

Sovereign took the opportunity to roll out of the way of my rocks and I rocketed half of them toward me and the cloth that clung tight. The cloth man zig-zagged out of the way but, I kept the rocks chasing after the cloth so that it never got more than a moment of stinging pain before it had to dodge out of the way. The other half of the rocks I had sweep wildly about behind me, not wanting to waste the time to look over my shoulder to find Sovereign.

I made my way up the stairs with the cloth man following after me. We danced, the cloth zig-zagging as it attempted to stay out of reach of my rocks and grab a hold of me. After we left Sovereign's line of sight I drew the rest of my rocks toward me and used all ten to sweep around me. The cloth man couldn't avoid all of them and the one that hit it, dragged the cloth through the air and held it against the wall. The arms and hands of the cloth man reached out in my direction, but it didn't have the strength of the Knight and couldn't escape the rock that pinned it.

I raced up the steps and across the roof. I slid down as quickly as I dared, dropping floors at a time before reaching my hands out and catching myself. When I made it to the ground I considered throwing up a huge cloud of dust but decided against it. No one was directly chasing me, and the cloud of dust would be a signature saying I was here, and that was the last thing I wanted. I raced down the street pulling on my hoodie and stuffing the skull cap and mask into the backpack. Within a couple blocks I was just another guy out for a late night run.


	5. Adit 105

Adit

1.05

I flipped through Blink's file and cursed my own stupidity. Blink was one of the newer members of High Minded's collection and had an appropriately small file. If I had grabbed someone else's file I would have had more to go on. In the heat of the moment though I'd not thought it through. Stupid. A careless mistake. Not only that, but I'd gone up against a cape with little information on how her power worked even though there was plenty of information and speculation online. She had three different minions. I'd faced her metal and cloth minions and there was a third one made of stone. All of them were pitch black and had different powers of their own.

I'd also decided to do further research on the remaining members of the Freedom Force: Seventh Heaven and Commando. Seventh Heaven was a stranger capable of creating illusions. The mechanics of her power weren't well known, typical for a stranger, but everyone who had testified against her in court had described the effect as 'euphoric'. Commando was a breaker. He could transform his body into ice and left a trail of ice after him which he could move through instantaneously.

None of them were particularly offensive, which made sense why High Minded wanted to pair them with Displace, a team that was particularly good at offense and other than Magdalena, lacked any real defensive abilities.

Blink's file hadn't been a complete failure. By marking the points where the police and PRT had made note of her or her effect I'd managed to narrow down a couple spots she likely stayed near or visited often in the Sunnydale area. Vague guesses at best, but vague guesses were better than the pile of nothing I'd been working with before.

The real problem I had was that I still didn't know how to take care of her. I couldn't kill her. Even some of the worst villains didn't do that. Driving her out of the city seemed impossible. Even if I chased her out of town she'd just return to meet back up with her team. Causing her to abuse her powers also seemed out of the question. Her powers didn't cause her to harm anyone and with her connection to the High Minded the three strikes rules would be stretched as far as it could go. Containing her also wouldn't work. Not with a power like mine against a power like hers.

I set the file aside and stared at the television where Max was giving his interview on repeat. I could replicate the entire interview from memory by now. The questions and answers, the way the camera shifted a foot to the left in the middle of one of Max's answers or the way the interviewer brushed her brown hair out of her face after she shook his hand.

My phone rang.

"Hello," I said as I muted the interview.

"Richard," Scott's familiar voice said. "Did you see the news?" He didn't wait for a response. "Isn't it crazy how things you thought were secure, private things you wouldn't want anyone else knowing, can be taken from you? It's terrifying knowing that at any moment they could tell the world and ruin you. You don't have any idea how scary that is do you?"

The threat in his words were just vague enough to make sure I knew what he was talking about but to allow him any deniability if this was somehow being recorded. I cursed my own stupidity. It seemed to be a reoccurring thing at this point. Of course he would figure it out. He had revealed information to me and a week later his office was broken into and classified information was taken, information I had specifically asked about.

"Anyway," Scott continued, "I was calling to make sure I could count on your support. After this recent disaster I need a positive press release." He hesitated long enough to make sure the emphasis on his next line was clear. "Or failing that, I suppose I'll have to find some other way to satiate my clients."

And my secret identity made for a suitable offering to the High Minded. "Fine," I said. "I'll back you."

"Glad to hear it! And it's not me you're backing, it's your fellow coworkers and miners all across the world," Scott said in an overly cheery tone.

"If that's all," I said.

"I suppose it is."

"One more thing."

"Sure, what is it?" Scott said.

"Her address."

There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. "You're funny." He hung up.

I cursed and punched the couch seat beside me. It didn't take long for me to suit up and head out into the night. My head pounded as I raced north to the area I'd noted for having the most occurrences of things disappearing. No matter what happened Scott would be able to figure out the truth, or at least get close enough to it to be a problem.

The first area covered about three blocks with fifteen reports of things disappearing in front of people's eyes only to reappear a little while later. An apartment complex caught my eye as I approached. It sat on the far end of the three blocks with a small park on the other side of the street. Not quite what I imagined for a villain's lair. She was new though and like the rest of us had a life before she got her powers. More importantly, her power probably made it difficult for her to hang out in any of the GKI's safehouses. Randomly shunting drugs, money, or any of the gang's thugs would put a damper on productivity and draw too much attention.

I climbed up the side of a building across the street and kept an eye on the apartment. I'd staked out Max's place before but this made me nervous. It didn't make much sense if I was being honest. Max had a lot more power. The most Blink could do was shunt me away for a little while as she made her escape. There was more riding on this though. Max expected me to take care of her, and I still didn't know exactly how I was going to do that. Scott knew too much about the situation and anything I did would easily be traced back to me, and not just my cape identity, which would be bad enough, but to me.

I nearly missed it when it happened. A person in a hoodie stepped out of the apartment and made their way to dark area around the corner of the apartment building. Something about the way the person looked, as if they had too many layers of clothes on caused me to take a second look. I jumped to the next building over and climbed the rest of the way when I didn't quite make it. From this vantage point I could see Blink shedding her hoodie and sweatpants for the tracksuit she'd worn the other night with the eyes sewn into it.

I concentrated on her as she headed further away from me down the side of the complex. I jumped and grabbed hold to the side of the building about halfway down before jumping the rest of the way to the ground. She wasn't hard to trail and I did my best to stay on rooftops or on the sides of buildings when I could. A car vanished in front of her and I started counting in my head. I'd been so in the fight last time I hadn't bothered to see how long her effect lasted, which was important information. The car reappeared after thirty-three seconds. My research continued as various things disappeared and reappeared. A shrub took twenty-eight seconds to return. A tacky garden gnome took thirty-one. As far as I could tell something was shunted once a minute and took around thirty seconds to return. She'd caused more than one thing to vanish in her fight against Max which meant it wasn't always consistent.

She turned down a street and there was a surge of light and a shrill shriek. I raced to catch up and saw a mess of wires lying on the ground severed from their telephone pole which no longer existed. The entire street had gone dark and Blink had picked up her pace. I carefully made my way around the live wires and chased after her when I felt the pulse. It felt like a ring around me and as it faded I could feel it pulling ahead. It wasn't hard to figure out it was a radius around Blink, and that I was inside of it. My pace slowed as I allowed her to get far enough ahead that I wouldn't be in the radius any more.

As best as I could tell there was a radius of about two hundred feet around her, maybe more. I knew from following her and the earlier fight that most of the stuff she affected was much closer to her. Maybe fifty feet if I had to put a guess on it.

None of this was helping me figure out how to take care of her, but it was helping me understand her power better. If- when things came to a head, that information could prove invaluable.

She turned off and entered a run-down building. This one looked like what I'd pictured when I thought of villains. The building sat at the end of a mostly abandoned strip mall. A skeezy looking bar at the end still had a couple lights on and a couple customers but the rest of the place looked like it'd been abandoned for a while now. I climbed up the front of a restaurant nearby and laid down to keep watch. Magdalena came next. Her golden glow descended from the sky and she entered the same way Blink had. A woman I hadn't seen before came next. She wore a white frilly skirt and a baby blue blouse that matched her leggings. Her gloves and boots were golden and complimented the sun mask she wore to hide her face. Seventh Heaven. I did a quick check to make sure nothing had changed around me. By the time I'd finished she'd already made her way inside the old store.

No one else came for a while. One of the customers at the bar stumbled out and passed out in the parking lot. I picked up a couple rocks from the ground around me and drew them up to me. I tried again to move the asphalt or concrete from the road and sidewalk but failed. My thoughts drifted to the interview as I waited for the villains to finish their meeting. I scraped the rocks in my hands together idly as I replayed it word for word in my mind. If I concentrated hard enough it was like I had my television in front of me.

I scraped my hand against the side of the rock and was surprised by the pain. My scraping had sharpened the rock with a fine edge and my hand was now bleeding. I shifted my skin around to cover it up which managed to stop the bleeding although there was still a sharp pain.

The doors to the building opened and Commando emerged in his military fatigues and helmet with war paint covering his face. Sovereign left with him. A man made of black stone carried her. The third type of minion I hadn't faced. It was hard to tell at this distance and with her mask on, but it looked like her face had been bruised from when I'd pelted her. A moment later Seventh Heaven left with Target and Magdalena. It took another minute for Blink to leave by herself. Her power didn't play well with others. Good for me. Bad for her.

She made her way back toward me and her apartment. No one else left while I waited to trail after Blink. They'd been in there for a little over an hour. Long enough people may have come to fix the pole she'd blinked. If I were her, I would choose a different route back home, which meant new and unfamiliar territory.

When she turned off the path she'd taken on our way there, I began to close the distance between us. If she was in unfamiliar territory then she'd be just as lost as me. And now that we were far enough away there was less of a risk the others would be able to come and help her.

I tossed the sharpened rock into the air and had it hover beside me. I could hear Max's voice in my head. "I need her taken care of." The rock began to spin as it hovered by my head. I would have liked to pelt her with a handful of rocks, but they moved so slowly whenever I controlled more than one.

She turned around a corner and I raced to catch up. I jumped to the roof of the building and raced across it to see her making her way up the street. I wasn't out of her radius, but I was outside of her smaller radius where most things were affected. I sent the rock flying and it got halfway before vanishing. She turned around and a car next to her blinked out of existence.. I'd figured her powers would work more often in a fight, but I hadn't expected it to block an attack she wasn't even aware of. I pulled a couple more rocks out of my pocket and launched them at her.

She'd already started running and was pulling her phone from her pockets. The first rock pelted her in the back and the second swept around to knock the phone out of her hands. It clattered to the ground and she hesitated but I quelled that and smashed whatever was left of her phone with a rock. I raced after her on the rooftops and wished I had Max's ability to leap wherever I wanted to go. I threw up a dust cloud in front of her, just large enough to cover the road and sent a couple rocks through it to batter her.

Her tracksuit vanished. She wore sweats underneath that were similarly covered with eyes. She raced through the dust cloud and I moved it to form a circle around her. One of my rocks left my power and I tossed another one into the air to go join it's brother. They raced in circles in the dust and I could feel them come to a stop every time they pelted her. A weathervane near me vanished and I held back to try and get out of her radius.

"Stop," she yelled, and I did. "What do you want?"

I felt the sharpened rock launch forward as it reappeared and I grabbed hold of it and let it drift toward Blink.

I need her taken care of.

"Can you return your power to it's usual level?"

"I can try," she said. "It acts up more when I'm nervous or tense."

I dropped the dust cloud and she looked around at the two rocks which hovered around her. She wasn't very powerful on her own. Without control over her own power she relied on luck and a supporting team. With others she worked as a useful distraction or as a great way to add randomness to the battlefield.

"Just tell me what you want. I'm sure we can work something out."

I need her taken care of.

"I don't want to hurt you," I said. You want me to kill her?

If that's what it takes. But it wasn't what it would take. I was a hero. Like Legend.

"I need you to leave town for a little while."

"Leave town?"

I need her taken care of.

"Just for a while. A week," I said.

"And leave my team weak? I'm already a burden on them enough. Constantly making them work around me, keeping me safe while they stay far enough away so I don't accidentally take them out of commission. And then when they need me I just take off?"

"They don't need you. You just said yourself you make them work around you."

"How dumb do you think I am? If you want me to leave then I pose a problem you can't fix. I know you're strong enough to take the down, but you have to get up close. With me around, you can't do that."

I need her taken care of.

"It's not what you think," I said. "That's not me. I mean, I'm not him."

She hesitated. "The metal guy?"

I lowered the two rocks that floated by her head to the ground and tried to keep track of the things that were vanishing. It had been slowing down, but wasn't back down to it's usual rate yet.

"A show of faith," I said and stood up. She looked up at me. I made my way to the edge of the building and climbed my way down.

"You don't look like him," she admitted. "Or act like him."

"I'm trying to help him," I said. I need her taken care of. "He's in trouble and I'm trying to limit the damage he does to himself and others."

"And that requires me leaving?"

"Do you mind if I head over toward you?" I asked.

She looked around, shoved her hands in her pockets, and finally nodded. I slowly made my way over to her. Over half a minute since her last blink. I stopped around the radius of where most things were affected and waited.

"What about when you attacked Sovereign?"

"That was- I needed information and she got in my way. I had to find a way out of there and there isn't much else I can do."

"So if I don't get out of your way you'll beat me up to?"

"If I have to." I took another couple steps forward.

"Maybe we can find another way. I could arrange a meeting so we can all talk things through."

"I don't think that's gonna work." I took another step and drew the sharpened rock toward me. It hovered by my feet, just off the ground. Barely noticeable unless she was looking.

"Maybe we could try something else."

Something about the way she said it drew my attention. She wasn't looking for a solution, not in particular. A solution would be nice, but what she really wanted as time. Time for others to arrive. She'd notified the others somehow. The phone? I'd broken it. Her hands were still in her pockets. Her power blinked things out of existence for a while, of course she'd have a backup phone, just like her backup outfits. After I'd smashed her first one she'd been careful to not bring attention to it. Fuck. How long did I have? Not long enough. The others would be here soon and then I wouldn't have a chance.

I need her taken care of.

I'd failed. This had been my best chance. They'd be stupid to let her go anywhere by herself until I was dealt with, and my powers were useless against more than half of them.

Until then, I don't want you anywhere near me.

I rocketed the two rocks by her sides at her head and raced forward as I sped the sharpened rock at my feet toward her. One of the rocks at her side blinked and the other two sped up. The first rock slammed into her head and she yelped in pain. I turned it back around to hit her as she stumbled back. It vanished as well and the sharp rock sliced against the side of her face. Still not fast enough to do any serious damage but it had left a long scratch across the side of her face from which blood was beginning to pour.

Until then, I don't want you.

I called the last rock back to my hand and with an arcing swing drove it into her throat. Her eyes went wide and she gurgled. Two rocks reappeared and dropped to the ground beside her as she collapsed. I pulled all of the rocks back up to my hand and took a couple stunned steps back. The impact of what I'd done filled me and I raced away. I'd killed her. I could feel my stomach churning and my heart pounding and I knew that had gone terribly wrong but I could only think one thing.

He would want me now.


	6. Interlude 1a

Interlude 1.a

"On August 15th Master Drilling, a subsidiary of Royal Gold Inc, experienced a cave-in which led to the deaths of five-hundred and three miners. This makes it the largest mining accident in the history of the United States.

"While Master Drilling and Royal Gold have expressed their condolences to those affected, they have refused to acknowledge their culpability in the accident. For over two years now those of us working in the mines, myself included, have been complaining about the deterioration of our equipment. Despite numerous attempts to bring attention to the safety issues this posed, we were ignored. Meanwhile, Master Drilling and Royal Gold were reporting unprecedented profits."

"Cut that last line," Mr. Goodwin said.

Deepak looked up from his notes. "What? I feel it's important."

"Of course it's important, but Royal Gold will try to paint it as jealous employees trying to milk money out of tragedy. Make it about the lives lost and leave money out of it."

Deepak scratched through the line. "Profits that could have been, hold on." He crossed through more lines before continuing. "Despite numerous attempts to bring attention to the safety issues this posed, we were ignored. And now, two months after the accident there has still been no investigation into these claims. Royal Gold's report has been accepted as fact despite multiple discrepancies which leave its credibility in question. All we are asking is a thorough investigation into what really happened in North Elk Mine so that the truth, which our fallen brothers and sisters deserve, can be known."

"Not bad," Mr. Goodwin said. "It'd probably be better to end with 'fallen brothers and sisters' for emotional impact. Try- so that everyone can know the truth of what happened to our fallen brothers and sisters." Mr. Goodwin paused to let Deepak change his notes. "The interviewers are going to want a personal story too. Where you were. What you saw. How it made you feel."

"I could pass the interview off to Dick then."

"No, passing the interview off could look like we're trying to milk Richard's presence in the mine. And you should get used to calling him Richard during all of this."

"Aren't we though? Using the fact he was in the mine? I mean, that's why we need him on board."

"Of course, but it's better if we aren't passing off questions to him at the time. I know you weren't working at the mine that day, but you heard what happened. How'd you feel when you got the news? Did you head to the mine?"

"I mean, I was shocked, like everyone else."

"More," Mr. Goodwin said.

"Going to the mine would just get in the way of the first responders. But I did go to the hospital when I heard that Dick- Richard had been sent there. We'd been friends since elementary. We were basically family. I got there shortly after he did. It's hard to remember, much of it is a blur but I remember walking into his room and seeing him lying there. He looked like a ghost, covered in dust. The doctors said a lot of things like dusty lung, fibrosis, silicosis. He'd inhaled so much dust they all but guaranteed he was going to have serious side effects. They gave him a couple months to two years before some of the worst symptoms would start showing: weakness of breath, coughing, weakness, weight loss.

"And you'd have to know D-Richard to know just how much of a blow that was. The guy lives to run. We always ran as kids, as kids do, but he was the one who convinced me to run cross country in high school. I wasn't that great, but he lived for it. He ran in college too, got a scholarship for it. Even after college he kept running. He ran 5K's and 10K's every chance he could and talked about running a marathon when he had the time.

"I remember when everything had settled down he'd made me promise we'd run that marathon. We've signed up for the Colfax Marathon this spring. We run together every weekend to train, but he doesn't enjoy it as much as he used to. I can tell. Every time we run we're both reminded that this time next year- I just feel so helpless. What am I supposed to tell him? That it's gonna be alright? His life is slowly being taken away from him and all I can do is help him limp across the finish line of his final run."

Mr. Goodwin held out a box of tissues and Deepak waved it away. He wiped his sleeves across his face and took a deep breath. "How was that?"

"That was good. That was really good."

Deepak nodded. He'd been holding it all in, trying to keep up appearances for Dick. It felt so good to just tell someone though. He wanted to say that he was mad at Dick too, mad that he'd made him promise to run that stupid marathon. Mad that he'd put that burden on him. He couldn't say that though.

"Is that all then?" he asked.

"Yeah," Mr. Goodwin responded as he stood.

"I still can't believe you got Dick to work with you. He's my best friend, and I've never been able to change his mind once he decided what he was gonna do."

"It's my job to change people's minds."

"Well you're gonna have to tell me what you did some time. Figuring out how to change his mind would be a game changer."

"I'm afraid it won't be much help. We simply came to a mutual agreement." Mr. Goodwin shook his hand. "And thank you for running the meeting for me today. After the announcement that Richard was standing with us last week I've been drowning in paperwork and meetings."

"You do your job here, and we'll do our job."

"I'll text you about the information for your interview later."

Deepak nodded and headed out of Mr. Goodwin's office. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve again before he entered the lobby. Three messages confirming the address and time for the meeting today and a message from Dick saying he wouldn't be able to make the meeting.

Deepak was worried about him. Dick had always been a little obsessive. He got ideas stuck in his head and wouldn't let them go. It'd been a real wake up call of just how bad things had gotten when he'd visited Dick's place and found it covered in filth. Pre-accident Dick would never have let it get to that point. Even more frightening was his reaction when he realized how bad the place had gotten. Every minute of his free time had gone to making sure everything about his house was perfect. Without work, his usual obsession, he had latched onto something to give him purpose and had overextended himself. As usual.

His parents were absent, though that wasn't new. Their friends had pulled away and every time he'd tried to get them to meet up with Dick either they or he had declined. Apparently they didn't know what to say to him. It wasn't like he was dying. Lots of people with Silicosis lived long happy lives. He'd looked it up. Sure, there were complications and some things like running that were going to be out of the question, but it wasn't a death sentence. And there were capes out there who could heal.

That was the real reason Deepak had pushed for this, why he'd hired Mr. Goodwin. The man got things done and if this got big enough there was a chance one of those capes who could make a difference would take notice. The story should have been international, but it'd been overshadowed by the arrival of Leviathan. Dick had declined to give interviews, which only made the problem worse. Then Max had given his interview and the narrative had shifted to drawing together. Healing.

It was a pretty sentiment, especially with everyone scared of the new monster that had risen from the sea. Everyone had questions and no one had answers. People latched on when the victim said let's join together, hold hands, and sing kumbaya because it was easy. Normally it was easy to fall into fear and anger but all things human paled when set next to the devastation that was the now two Endbringers.

Deepak pulled into the parking lot of the meeting and made his way inside where the others were hanging out. Trent stood over the rest and his voice boomed out a welcome. Deepak made his way over, said his hellos, and listened as Trent talked about the pond he'd been building in his backyard.

It didn't take long for the others to arrive. There were a lot of new faces, but Mr. Goodwin had warned him that would happen. After Dick had attached his name others who had been hesitant would be convinced to jump on board while others who didn't want to join would be interested to see what was happening.

There was a loud clatter and Deepak looked over to see Trent standing sheepishly next to the snack table. It had collapsed and coffee, chips, and pretzels were spread out around his feet. Deepak helped clean it up and by the time they finished he was late to start the meeting. He made his way up to the front to the microphone stand.

"Alright guys, a bit of a late start today." He was cut off as the sharp sound of feedback caused him to recoil. The sound ended with a click. He tapped the microphone but it had gone dead. Of course it would happen when he was leading the meeting. He cleared his throat.

"I'm glad you all could make it out here today," he said loud enough to fill the room as he moved the microphone off to the side. "We've made a lot of progress this week. Dick has agreed to stand with us and we've already got a couple interviews lined up. If you'd be willing to do an interview let me know, we need as many faces out there as we can get."

He paused as the bathroom door in the back opened and one of the new faces stepped out. The man looked familiar, but Deepak couldn't quite place where he'd seen him before. The man gave a nod to Deepak, and then walked out the door. The MSHA Inspector. He was the one who'd been in charge of inspecting the mines to make sure they were up to code, and the one who'd led the joke of an investigation into what had caused the accident. What was he doing here?

"Wait," Deepak said and stepped after him. His foot had been wrapped up by the wiring of the microphone from when he'd moved it out of his way, and he tripped over it and fell to the ground. There was a bright flash of light and crackling as the wires around his legs went limp.

"Fire!" someone yelled. Deepak could see Trent making his way over to the fire extinguisher as a couple of the guys made their way over to the fire.

It was spreading fast, and it took a moment for Deepak to realize there were actually a couple fires. One in the corner where he'd pulled the cord out of the wall while falling and a couple in the ceiling, most likely from the sparks from when the electricity had gone out. A couple of the other guys must have noticed as well as there was a rush toward the door.

"It's not opening," someone yelled as Trent made his way over to the fire. He struggled with it for a moment before the nozzle flew off and hit one of the men trying to quell the fire in the head. He fell to the ground as Deepak stood.

The fire was spreading and a crowd had gathered around the door as people struggled to get outside. Deepak raced past them for the bathroom where he turned on the light. The exhaust fan turned on as well and there was a brief moment where the sound of the motor grew louder before the ceiling above him burst into flame as well. He stumbled back from the blast of heat and Trent helped him up.

"What's going on?" Trent asked before breaking into a coughing fit.

"There's no way this many things just go wrong," Deepak said as he pulled out his phone.

"They've tried already. Nobody has service," Trent said. "I don't understand."

Deepak closed his eyes and watched the MSHA inspector nod at him. "We're being executed."


	7. Beam 201

**Beam**

 **2.01**

"If you had anything to do with this," I said as calmly as I could. I would- I didn't know what I'd do. Blink's face filled my mind as she stared at me.

"Me?" Scott's voice was muffled over the phone. "I've been working with them since the beginning. You join and a week later, and then this happens? And you have the audacity to blame me. With the way things are, my case is over. All the time and money I've invested is gone and my bosses are breathing down my neck to wrap this up because they don't want their name affiliated with this disaster in any way."

"And that's it? Your noble cause is done."

"Yeah, sorry if that isn't noble enough for you. I was supposed to be at that meeting. If things had gone differently. I'm not putting my life on the line. Not for this."

"So fuck my friends, then."

"Don't be crass."

"It's what you're doing. What, the paychecks stopped coming in so you stop giving a fuck? What happened to helping the little guy? This is an obvious cover-up. Someone didn't want them making any more noise and you know that."

"Please stop yelling."

"But instead of being a man you tuck your tail between your fucking legs and run away because you're nothing but a coward."

"I know you're going through a tough time right now."

"A sniveling, money hungry leech."

"If you'd like to get in contact with me you can set an appointment with my secretary."

"Who doesn't care about what's right or wrong. If you grew a pair you'd actually stand up for something for once but all you care about is who lines your pockets. You work for villains. You represent them in court. How low can you go? You're scum, doing anything they ask you, and what for? Because you want validation from them?"

The droning of a dead line echoed in the silence as I fell silent. No idea how long ago he'd hung up on me. I set the phone back in its base, but it fell out and clattered to the table. With a roar I threw the phone and it shattered to pieces against the wall. The pieces lay scattered across the living room floor.

The sound of Blink choking on her own blood echoed around me.

I pulled my shoes on and raced out the door. Not that it did any good. All I could feel was the emptiness beside me. All I could see was a little boy, smiling as we biked through our suburban neighborhood. I ran through the tears, letting the wind blow across my face as my body ached.

Mindlessly, I ran. Numbness filling every part of me until my eyes were dry and still I kept running. The miles racked up though I had no way of knowing how far I'd gone. Of course I didn't. Deepak was the one who kept track of all that. He planned our routes and counted the miles. He was the one who took the lead and pointed out the direction. I didn't know what to do without him so I just kept running.

The sun had been down for a while when I finally stopped, exhausted. A familiar apartment complex loomed over me. Max's. I waited for someone else to leave and then slipped in after them. He stood behind the third door I tried. His stupid perfect self even lounging around his home in sweats.

"You," he said. "Come in. I saw the news. I thought you might have been there."

His place was small and messy. Not as messy as my placed had been when Deepak had commented about it. This was a different kind of messy. A lived-in messy. Dishes in the sink, papers on the table. A basket of laundry next to the sofa. The kind of messy that was instantly comfortable.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I took care of her for you," I said. I saw her again. The look of surprise and fear in her eyes.

"That's not important now," he said.

"I took care of her for you because you asked me to. So now we do whatever it is you need to do, and then you help me find out who killed my friends and we make them pay."

It took him a moment. He stared at me with a hard look on his face before he nodded. "Alright. I can do that."

He stuck his hand out and I shook it.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

"No," I said. "So what is it you need to do?"

"I need to find one of the Knights members and then kill him."

"Freedom Force or Displace?"

"Neither," Max said. "He's not powered."

"Then why do you need to deal with the teams at all? Why don't you just beat down on the street level members?"

"I already tried that. It was the first thing I did. The guy I'm looking for has been with the Knights for a while now. All the guys on the street are new. Some of them are barely teenagers. The only one I found who knew anything had only heard rumors that he'd moved up to being bodyguards for the capes. Far from slinging drugs on the streets."

"You think he's working for Displace then?"

"Not sure. But I figured I'd have a better chance against them than Freedom Force. I thought Blink would be a teleporter of some kind, which I probably would've been able to handle. I wasn't prepared for her. And I don't know anything about High Minded. Only that he exists, probably."

"Well with half of Freedom Force leaving and Blink gone, they may join together," I said. "I saw them meeting together while I was trailing Blink."

"Did you trail people for a job before working at the mine or something?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I can stick to the rooftops. People don't tend to look up."

"What is it you do, exactly? Power wise."

"You've seen me climbing and what I do with dust and rocks. I can also do this," I said as I shifted a little bit of skin around up to my face. It made me look a little chubbier, with a more oblong face than my usual triangle-like shape. "And another thing I don't quite understand yet. When I concentrate for a little while I can see these pings that come off things. I'm not quite sure what they mean."

"Quite a spread of powers."

"None of them are particularly useful."

"Your dust clouds were pretty useful. Kept Target from getting a lot of his trick shots off. How exactly do they work? You just summon them in an area? Do you have to be able to see them?"

"No, I don't have to see them," I said. "And I don't summon it, I have to work with what's around me."

I closed my eyes and pulled the dust in his apartment together and formed a reasonably thick cloud in the kitchen as an example.

"You can move it around then? How much fine control do you have?"

"Not much. I can lead it in general directions, spread it out or draw it together." I showed examples as I talked, moving the cloud closer to us and then spreading it out so it filled the room and then drawing it together into a single orb-like shape at eye level. "The more cohesive the action the better. I can sometimes do a couple different things at once, but it's difficult, like rubbing my belly and patting my head at the same time." I split the cloud in two and had one rotate clockwise while the other rotated counterclockwise. It took about a minute before they were both rotating clockwise.

We continued working with my powers for a while, trying to find out how much control I could exert. It wasn't much. Shapes other than lines, spheres, and rings proved to be impossible. My power worked more like herding than as a fine manipulator. Max had a few tests like seeing how long the effects of my power lasted after I stopped concentrating on it, and then having me switch my concentration back and forth between different actions to keep different effects up for longer. By the end of it I had eight spheres of dust rotating in different directions. The ninth ended up with the dust floating off on their own as I struggled to keep up.

We collected rocks from outside to test how much control I had there. It was less than with the dust. Even working together I could only get about ten working together and only when they were tiny. The larger the rocks, the less of them I could move, with the largest being a flat rock about the size of my hand or a thicker rock a little smaller than my palm. He tested how well I could control groups of pebbles. I did okay while holding some rocks still while controlling one or when having three of four perform repetitive but different movements.

"It's not very powerful," I said as I flung a rock at the couch. "When I'm just controlling one it's faster, fast enough to do some damage. To do any serious damage I'd have to hit them in the eye or something."

We went over the rest of my powers in a similar fashion. Max doing his best to go over the fine details of the powers. I could move across any surface but wasn't any more securely connected to it than if I'd been walking across the ground. By moving skin around I could alleviate some surface level damage. He was as lost by the pings as I was.

"You've seen some of what I can do," Max said. "My jumps are self explanatory. And I can turn my body to steel, except I don't gain any strength from it. Turning my skin to steel is like wearing full plate of armor. That's how I took Magdalena out of the sky. I turned my entire body to steel. I can't move like that because I'm _heavy_. She couldn't carry all the weight and I dropped on top of her. I also have a couple other things that are harder to see. I can push or pull things around me. It's very weak."

"I think I noticed when I was throwing rocks at you. They didn't seem to be hitting you very hard and some of them just missed."

"If I switch the effect on and off rapidly it can really mess with the trajectory of things. And finally, I can sense metal around me. Kind of like you can sense your dust or rocks."

"Oh, I can't actually sense them," I said. "I can sense when my power isn't working on them like when Blink shunted them or when I'm driving them forward and they stop moving, but that's it. I can't tell where they are or what happened them, though I can sort of figure it out sometimes."

"You triggered during the mine accident, didn't you?" Max said.

"How did you know?"

"It's when I triggered, and there's a lot of similarities between our powers. I figured the chances we got our powers at the same time were high. I wonder if it means anything, our powers seem connected to the mine. And to each other."

"I bet the Protectorate would know more."

"I don't want to go to them yet," Max said. He stood up from the couch where we were sitting and grabbed our empty glasses of whiskey and headed to the kitchen.

"Why not? You're not a-" I hesitated, "a villain, are you?"

"No. I'm- I'd like to think I'm a good person. I'll join them when I'm done. If I go to the Protectorate before I get to Miguel I don't think I'll ever get another opportunity and I don't think I could live with myself if that happened."

"Would you tell me why?"

"I'd rather not," he said as he sat back down beside me and held out my refilled glass.

I took it and took a sip. I don't know why, but that crushed me a little bit. I wanted to be the person he could tell anything to, the person he could trust with anything. It didn't make any sense. We'd just met. Of course he wouldn't trust me, not enough to tell me why he wanted a man dead. Sure I was going to help him kill him, but-

"If I'm going to help you kill them," I said and left the rest hanging. "But I understand if you don't."

He gave me a long look before finishing off his drink and setting the empty glass on the cluttered coffee table.

"When I was a kid, we lived in a bad part of town. My older brother, he was being pressured to join the Knights. When he refused they sent Miguel and Jordan to teach him a lesson."

His jaw clenched and the story ended. I would have liked more, but it was enough. I could guess how the story ended.

"I'm sorry," I said. I reached out and grabbed his hand in mine.

He recoiled and pulled his hand away as he stood. "I'm not like that."

"I'm so sorry," I said. "I didn't mean- I just- I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he said. "You're drunk. We're drunk. We've been drinking. And that was personal. I was sending the wrong signals."

"And I've had an emotional day," I said. Which was the truth. "Which isn't an excuse. I'm sorry. I think I'm gonna go home, it's," I looked at my watch, "well, it's early at this point."

"Okay," Max said. "Come over tomorrow and we can talk strategy."

"Alright," I said as I headed for the door.

"Let me call you a cab," he said.

"I could use a walk."

"It's cold out there."

"I'll be fine."

He shoved a hoodie in my hands. "Take this at least then. How are you gonna help me if you're sick? Just bring it back tomorrow."

I accepted the hoodie and stepped out into the hallway. I slipped into it after I closed the door behind me. It hung a little loose on me with his bigger frame, but I didn't care. I took a deep breath and I could smell him, that semi-dark, semi-sweet smell, and for a moment it was almost as if he'd wrapped his arms around me.

He wanted me to come back tomorrow. I smiled to myself. I'd done it. I'd made him want me. I drowned out the sight of Blink's scared eyes and the gargle as she died with the pleasant scent of him.


	8. Beam 202

**Beam**

 **2.02  
**  
Max walked down the sidewalk with a small cloud of dust swirling in a low fog-like cloud around his feet. His face was masked by a coating of metal which softened and disguised his features. With just his face and hands exposed it looked like his entire body was covered in metal, but I knew better. Under his black compression shirt and pants he placed his metal sparingly, only covering vitals and areas likely to be attacked. Walking around with too much of his body covered in metal tired him out. By being picky about which parts were turned to metal he could save his energy for when he needed it.

I followed after him on the rooftops, hidden as well as I could manage. My encounter with Blink had the fortunate effect of revealing that the GKI didn't know about me, and believed Max was the one using my powers. We'd decided to capitalize on the confusion and maintain the ruse as long as we could on the off chance it could give us an advantage in the field.

We made our way toward one of the GKI's better known corners in the heart of their territory. With their team fractured they were probably spread too thin to adequately cover their territory, meaning only one or two of them would be present or close enough to respond to an attack. It was our hope anyway. Max was confident he could take whatever the GKI could throw at him. While he could probably take all of them one-on-one, I wasn't confident he could take them on as a group. Not that I told him that.

There were four teenagers at the corner. One of them was older, maybe early twenties, but the rest barely looked old enough to drive. They were focused on something the oldest guy held in his hands, paying little attention to whatever was around them.

"Cape," a kid on a stoop yelled and there was a flurry of movement. A couple kids I should have realized were placed as lookouts made their way into their apartments. I'd been thrown by their ages. The youngest couldn't have been older than seven.

The four teenagers bolted and I threw the dust that I'd kept swirling around Max forward to blind them. Max jumped at the same time and landed in the middle of the cloud. I dropped it and Max stood alone in the middle of the street. The cloud had given the kids enough cover to hide their movements. One of them was just gone while the other three had split up and were running in various directions. Max leapt again and landed in front of the oldest one, the only one who had turned around and raced my direction in the confusion of the dust cloud. Max grabbed him by the scruff of the shirt and looked over his shoulder down the street but it was empty. The kids were all gone and the other two teenagers had either escaped into one of the apartment buildings or turned off to hide in an alley or down a side street.

"Shit man," the teen in Max's grip said with a heavy accent. "We fucking said we don't know no fucking Miguel. What more you wanting?"

"Where's your backup?" I could hear Max asking. I followed his cue and did a sweep of the surrounding apartments. I didn't see anything.

"Ain't none. Know fucking better than that now."

"Alright. Hand over your stash."

"Aw come on man. What's that shit? They going to blame me."

"You think I care?" Max asked. He let go of the kids shirt and shoved him back. The guy struggled to keep his balance but managed to stay upright.

"Ain't gotta be like that," the kid said. He spit a gob of thick black chew onto the sidewalk and made his way up the street with Max following close behind him. The kid led him back up the street to an old abandoned apartment. He pushed the wood that was covering up a window and pulled out a brown paper bag. Max opened it and looked inside.

"You expect me to believe this is all you've got here?"

"Jódete."

Max made an aggressive step forward and the kid flinched. To his credit, that's all he did.

"Don't make this harder than it's gotta be," Max said. I did a visual sweep up and down the street. A couple windows had opened and people were pointing cameras at Max and the kid, but that wasn't uncommon. People wanted pictures of the people with powers. None of them looked threatening, a couple kids who should have been in school, a couple ladies from middle aged to elderly and a barrel chested old man who had emerged from his home just to sit on the steps of his house. As long as he wasn't getting involved he wasn't a problem.

Max and the kid were still arguing but they had reached a stalemate. The kid wasn't willing to give up any more of his supply and Max knew the puny bag in his hands would barely send a message. Three of the guys friends had slipped away, which meant there were more than enough chances someone would run off to alert others. I could feel my heart pounding in anticipation.

"I sure do hope you were planning on taking that to the officials, son" a deep voice said. I glanced up and down the street, cursing myself for letting someone sneak up on us. Others up and down the street were similarly surprised. I only saw the speaker when I noticed that the barrel-chested man sitting on his steps was looking up.

Two capes descended from the sky, each of them standing on a thick white ring. Of course, no one ever looked up. Not even me. They'd have to have seen me. I would have stood out like a sore thumb sneaking around on the rooftops. They seemed to have ignored me for now though, and had descended so they were hovering over Max and the kid.

My first view of members of the Protectorate. Shadow Hawk and Saturn. They couldn't look any different next to each other. Shadow Hawk was dressed in nearly all black with a heavy trench coat covering most of his body. His military trousers were a dark gray color that I knew from memory would match the bird-like form that covered the chest of his bullet-proof vest. Everything else I could see was the same black color of the trench coat: his boots, his gloves, and his cowl which I also knew covered the top of his face down to his nose. Saturn, on the other, was covered in white and was almost too bright look at. Her uniform was nothing more than a leotard with alternating shades of tan, brown, and white, but she had also covered the rest of her body, her arms, legs, and face, with her faintly glowing white rings. The same type of ring that the two of them were currently standing on as they hovered in midair. The two of them didn't hold a candle to the Quadumvirate, but they were still powerful. Powerful enough either one of them could probably take both of us.

I was almost giddy at the sight of them.

"I was, I'm not trying to take over the territory here," Max said.

"We'll take over from here then," Shadow Hawk said. Saturn didn't even wait for a response. A ring of white light descended from each of her wrists and expanded as it fell until they were large enough to wrap around the gangster. They hovered around the poor kid, one around his chest and arms and the other around his legs. They contracted until they were wrapped tightly around him, restricting his movement. He toppled over, unable to balance himself, but the rings lifted him into the air and were reinforced by two more bands of light which wrapped around his ankles and waist before tightening.

"Coño," the kid said as he was lifted into the air to the same level as the two heroes. The two of them ignored him but Saturn sent yet another faintly glowing ring to wrap around his mouth. Its partner descended and stretched until it could barely be called a ring, taking a shape more like a disk with the tiniest hole in the center.

"You think you could let me have the credit for this though?" Max asked as he set the brown paper bag on the disk. "I'm trying to build up a rep here."

"No problem, son" Shadow Hawk said as the disk and drugs rose up to their level. "We're not here to step on toes. We weren't sure about you though and wanted to step in before things got violent."

"It wouldn't have," Max said. I wasn't sure if it was a lie or not. "But I understand wanting to be on the safe side."

"If you're serious about the whole hero thing, it helps to have a team."

"So I've heard. I haven't had the time to visit the Rockies or Mountaineers though, and as much as I'd love to join the Protectorate I'm not sure I'd be willing to leave Denver."

There was a pause as Shadow Hawk gave Max a questioning look. Apparently unsatisfied with whatever he had seen in Max, he turned to Saturn who just shrugged.

"You seem like a stand-up guy so I'll let you in on a secret. The Protectorate is thinking about setting up shop here in your city." The announcement got gasps from those listening. "Keep your nose clean and we might come knocking."

It took a moment for Max to respond. "I'd be honored," he finally managed to say.

Shadow Hawk nodded. "You got a name yet, son?"

"Yeah, Titan."

"Alright, Titan. We'll be in touch." The two of them began to ascend higher as they were lifted by the white disks they were standing on. "Also, I thought you should know you got a tail."

"A friend," Max said.

"Ah. We'll keep a watch on the both of you then," Shadow Hawk said. He was professional enough to not look in my direction and give away my position. The two of them rose higher into the sky with their gagged and bound prisoner trailing after them. Then the three of them were out of sight as they floated away toward the horizon.

"You hear that?" Max said to the street, "I've got the Protectorate on my side. I'd break ties with the Knights if I were you. They're not long for this world. I'll be back here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. However long it takes to get the message across: The Knights don't own this corner anymore!"

There was no response to his announcement although minds must have been racing. I know mine was. The Protectorate was setting up an extension, here, and I was on the list. I did my best to keep a watch out as I trailed after Max, but it was difficult. Too many ideas and questions running through my head. Sure, I'd always wanted to join the Quadumvirate in New York City but this was actually feasible. This was something that was within reach, something more than just a pipe dream. Imagine what Deepak would think when I told him the Protectorate was going to stay in Denver!

It took a moment for me to realize. The weight of it all of a sudden felt oppressive. It was silly. It wasn't even something I'd ever imagined telling him before, but now that I couldn't, it was somehow worse. The fact that there was something new in my life and I wouldn't be able to share it with him was crushing. Even the things I'd kept secret from him, like me having powers, I'd imagined revealing to him at some time in the future. I'd imagined myself telling him after I'd established myself as a hero. I'd sit him down and say, hey, you know that great hero, the one everyone in Denver looks up to? That's me.

I'd never get to do that now.

I could feel my heart racing in my chest as I struggled to keep my breath. My lungs felt like they were going to burst and the world started to spin. I tried to calm myself, to catch my breath but I kept seeing Blink, gurgling on her blood as she reached out for me. It felt like I was gurgling on my own blood, like I was slowly suffocating to death in the open air. I lowered myself to sit on the roof. There was a blur of black and silver and Max was rushing over to me.

"I'm fine," I said as he approached, "Just a little out of breath."

"Your breathing is shallow," Max said. "Breathe with me." He exaggerated his own inhales and exhales so they were obvious and pressed a firm but gentle hand on my chest.

"I'm fine," I repeated after a couple minutes of that. "Just a little overexcited. How'd you know?"

"Your dust stopped moving with me," Max said. "I figured something was wrong. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," I said. Not sure if I believed myself.

"Alright," Max said. It was obvious he didn't believe me, but he didn't push it. "Let's get you home. It's been a crazy day."

He helped me up and gave my shoulder a light squeeze before leaping away. As he left I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders. I was fine. I'd just been upset about Deepak. And Blink. I looked down at the looming cloud of dust that I'd left in the street and quelled it with a thought. I was fine. 


End file.
